in Which Brad DeLong Loses His Nerve...
A question I did not ask Condi Rice from the audience last night:
I am thinking about the post-Cold War foreign policy of the GHW Bush administration...
It was that the U.S. would bind itself to use its military to execute the will of the U.N. Security Council, so that no other potential power would think it cost-effective to build a military, and no smaller power would think nukes necessary to protect itself from the U.S. its highest priority. The hope was that that would preserve the U.S.'s status as the world's hyperpower for another generation or so.
We broke that. You broke that.
Now all of the BRIC powers think that a weaker, distracted, and more troubled America is in their interest. And people like George Shultz are very pessimistic about the non-proliferation outlook.
Is there a way to get back from where we are now to the foreign policy world we hoped to live in back in 1992?
